“If we don’t play better than we did today, then hell yeah, (New Orleans) will break every record known to man against us,” said the Jets head coach, whose battered defense faces Drew Brees and the Saints next week.

Ryan sounded like a Catholic man crawling into the confessional booth after a rough weekend in Vegas. His Jets lost 49-9 to the Cincinnati Bengals – somehow, that lonely nine makes the beating look worse, doesn’t it? – on a day that was one butt fumble short of infamy.

It was so bad … period.

And now it is up to Ryan make it an aberration. The truth is, most NFL teams have a game like this along the way, where the effort is lousy, the opponent is better, and things get out of hand quickly.

So maybe this is that game for the Jets. This better be that game for the Jets. Because if this performance is indicative of what will come in the second half of the season, that promising 4-3 start is barreling toward another 6-10.

And, if that happens, it will be someone other than Ryan responsible for turning this franchise around.

“We are a much better football team (than the one) that showed up today and I believe that,” Ryan said. “We have to get a hell of a lot better.”

That the second half of the season begins against those Saints will give us an early indication of which direction this ship is going. Brees torched the Bills for another five touchdowns and 332 yards Sunday.

Bengals quarterback Andy Dalton is very good. Brees is a Hall of Famer in his prime.

So the Jets defense will have to regroup quickly from what was easily their worst performance of the season. As bad as quarterback Geno Smith played – and he had another two Pick 6s – that was the most troubling aspect of this one. That defense had kept them in every game.

But this …

The vaunted front four that treated Dalton as if he were wearing a red practice jersey, rarely laying a hand on him. The secondary made Marvin Jones, the Bengals’ No. 3 receiver, look like Marvin Harrison with 122 yards and a team record four touchdown catches.

Jets general manager John Idzik used the ninth overall pick on cornerback Dee Milliner. He was targeted five times in the first half and gave up four receptions for 108 yards and a touchdown – and the one incompletion was a clear drop by former Rutgers receiver Mohamed Sanu.

“I felt as player, I let my teammates down,” Milliner said. “I don’t want to be the one that’s the weak link.”

Milliner had company. Darrin Walls, his replacement when he went to the bench, was burned for a score. Antonio Cromartie, the supposed leader of the secondary, spent much of the game trying to catch A.J. Green from behind.

About the only hard hit from anyone associated with this defense came from Terricka Cromartie, aka Lady Cro, on Twitter: “Andy Dalton is making this (defense) look like pop warner.”

At one point, the Bengals had 119 yards and the Jets had minus-5. The home team had 294 yards at halftime and the visitors had 80. The defense that held Tom Brady to less than 50 percent of his passes twice this season gave up an average – an average – of 17.1 yards a reception.

Bad doesn’t begin to sum it up.

“I still feel confident in these guys,” linebacker Calvin Pace said. “We have to rebound, put it behind you, flush it, keep moving. We’ve been through this a couple times before.

“It all looks negative right now, but when we go look at the film, I’m sure there’s something we can build on.”

It was hard to imagine what, unless he was referring to the Bengals. They looked like a team that had a chance to do something special this season, with an accurate young quarterback and a nasty defense. They have all the ingredients to make noise in the postseason for once.

The Jets looked like the team that nearly every expected to see this season – inept on offense, lackluster on defense, and with a coach who didn’t have the answers for solving any of it.

This version of the Jets has not been on display this season, and that might be the one consolation now. Ryan is right: The Jets are a better team than this, and they’ll have a week to prove it.

The Saints are coming to town. As bad as it was against the Bengals, if this defense doesn’t improve, things can get even worse.